The Coming Breakup Between AI And The Cloud


For a decade, cloud AI has felt inevitable. It powers our voice assistants, photo libraries, recommendation engines, and a growing list of “smart” features we barely notice anymore. Yet beneath the convenience is a fragile dependency: if your connection stutters, your intelligence does too.​ We rarely question this arrangement, but we should. As models grow larger and expectations grow... » read more

Fast Isn’t Fast Enough: Redefining Metrics for Edge AI


Key Takeaways: Edge AI performance is about low latency and power efficiency, not peak TOPS. Memory bandwidth and data movement now limit edge AI more than compute. Successful edge AI requires balanced hardware, software, and fast model updates. Experts At The Table: Today’s chip architect must contend with multiple factors when architecting AI processors for fast and effi... » read more

AI At The Edge Ubiquitous, Agentic, Multimodal, and Hardware-Accelerated


Over the past decade, cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) has undergone significant maturation. Cloud-based AI now reliably supports large-scale model training, massive data storage, and centralized orchestration of AI workloads. At the same time, limitations—such as latency, bandwidth costs, privacy concerns, catastrophic consequences in the event of failure, and dependency on continuou... » read more

AI Power on the Edge


Key takeaways Power and thermal become primary design considerations, not just optimizations. Hardware architectures need to be developed from the ground up. Hardware/software/model co-development is essential. Implementing AI on the edge is driven by a different set of metrics than training or even inference in the cloud. It makes power a first-class citizen, if not the mos... » read more

Security in Data Centers for AI Applications


AI data centers are the engines of the new data revolution, transforming data lakes and extracting meaningful insights guided by user queries. In this white paper, we revisit the security problem and highlight that AI data centers pose specific risks whose impact extends far beyond initial expectations. Starting from the premise that the AI is “only as good as the data that comes in/out”, w... » read more

Minimum Energy Per Query


Key Takeaways Extracting heat from a chip faster is a short-term fix to a bigger problem. The longer-term challenge is how to reduce the amount of energy used per query. Data movement, guardbanding, and software inefficiency are key targets for the future. Heat is a serious problem within AI chips, and it is limiting how much processing can be done. The solution is either to... » read more

Future-Proofing System Design


This whitepaper has explored how converging forces—AI-driven workloads, heterogeneous integration, and increasingly complex security requirements—are transforming design priorities. Adaptability, openness, and lifecycle management are no longer secondary considerations but core architectural imperatives. Standardization through initiatives such as UCIe and OCP fosters interoperability and s... » read more

Balancing Training, Quantization, And Hardware Integration In NPUs


Experts At The Table: AI/ML is driving a steep ramp in neural processing unit (NPU) design activity for everything from data centers to edge devices such as PCs and smartphones. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss this with Jason Lawley, director of product marketing, AI IP at Cadence; Sharad Chole, chief scientist and co-founder at Expedera; Steve Roddy, chief marketing officer at Qu... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


TSMC is expected to reduce its Fab 14 mature-node capacity by 15% to 20% to free up resources for its advanced packaging technologies, reports Counterpoint. The foundry will likely rely on its VIS affiliate site in Singapore (operational in late 2026) and other overseas fabs to ensure continued supply for older nodes. Memory The U.S. threatened 100% tariffs on South Korean memory compan... » read more

Addressing Critical Tradeoffs In NPU Design


Experts At The Table: AI/ML are driving a steep ramp in neural processing unit (NPU) design activity for everything from data centers to edge devices such as PCs and smartphones. Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Jason Lawley, director of product marketing, AI IP at Cadence; Sharad Chole, chief scientist and co-founder at Expedera; Steve Roddy, chief marketing officer at Quadric; Steven W... » read more

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